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Friday, 21 August 2009

Happy Birthday EFG

EFG is now a teenager - 13 at last! Wow....makes me think. She's going into Y9 at school this year as well, and will be doing the first of her GCSEs this year - she's getting so grown up. We have had a lovely day today celebrating; she was up and opening her gifts at 7am, pottering with the YFG and her friend from up the road in the morning after she decorated her cake, and then we went out after an early lunch to go to the cinema for her birthday treat. After picking her friend, S, up, we got to the cinema a little late to see Bandslam, but I think that they were already going off that idea in the car anyway - so we ended up seeing "Ice Age 3" which was an animated film - a good one.

The friend stayed for pizza and cake before we took her home again, we popped in to see my sister in the same town, and called round to see the Head Coach from gym who had some allotment produce for us: runner beans, rhubarb, courgettes, onions, potatoes and a cabbage. Some of that will get eaten at the weekend, and some of it will have to go into the freezer. Being given all this lovely food makes me really feel that we are going into autumn now - the harvest is being gathered in; the slightly dusty smell of the combine harvesters in the fields around us and the balers ejecting the round bales onto the fields - we love to watch the bales magically appear! I'm not so keen on meeting the combines in the narrower roads round here, but the drivers are usually accommodating and move over....

Tonight there has been a massive plume of smoke visible on the horizon for hours and it has been on the news tonight that a tyre shredding plant has gone up in flames at Littleport which has worried the YFG. She remembers the Australian and Californian bush fires and was worried that the fire could spread over here - I had to explain that this fire was under control and that we are lucky that there is a big river beween us and Littleport which would stop the fire, should the fire service lose control. The EFG solemnly pointed out that all that smoke wasn't doing the ozone layer any favours, as we could see it throughout the evening.

I succumbed to the ebay temptation and bought some eggs on Wednesday evening - they arrived this afternoon by Special Delivery. Trouble is that I had to buy another incubator to put them in. End of poultry purchases for this year - totally! I bought some Black Orpington eggs (a dozen), half a dozen pure Lavender Orpingtons and half a dozen split Black Orpingtons ie carrying the Lavender gene. I'll explain that another night! They are all "resting" after coming through the post today, so they will get set in the incubators tomorrow or Saturday nights - I have to calculate the availability of the brooder space, so I need to make sure I can cope with all the potential hatchings.

Happy birthday to the new teenager ;-) I enjoy your blog very much, and have been through your countryside a few times going to visit my daughter in DM. Yes the tyre fire wouldn't do the ozone layer any good.